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00:08 Hi, I am Denise Simpson, a master life and leadership coach who helps women step into their authentic and feminine power so they can lead like visionaries, influence with grace, and create a legacy of contribution and service. You'll hear about real leadership clients with real problems navigating their success in life, business, and career. If you're ready to become a masterful leader, then this podcast was made for you. So let's get started.00:47 Hey, welcome back leader. So happy to serve you today. I can't not wait to talk about the art of your leadership. This is such a great conversation because we talk so much about the science of leadership. There's plenty of research, lots of empirical research, there's lots of leadership theories, lots of applications that we can use in our organizations. There's just a lot of systems and frameworks and all the good stuff that has been studied that has been proven to work. I love the research component, the research aspect of what I get to do with my clients. I dish out research in my own company. I'm constantly evaluating, surveying, and really tapping into where my clients are on their leadership journey. And I use that data to create frameworks, to create case studies, to create solutions. So when I go and consult an organization, I have lots of evidence and I have lots of data points to show that what I'm about to propose to you is going to work for your organization.01:50 That's what I get to use the science for, and that's what you get to use in any of my programs. And if you and I have worked together or will work together in the future, you'll understand that the science is very important and as important as the art of your leadership. But the science is something I live and breathe. I sleep with science. I wake up to science. I'm slightly obsessed with the science component. What I want to draw your attention to today is your art, your self expression, how you demonstrate your own unique perspective on life, on leadership. I want to know more about the art that you bring to your leadership practice because the science part, my friend, I can help you with all day every day. It is the art, however, that I'm not responsible for you are responsible for bringing that into the organization.02:52 So when you and I start coaching together, I'm gonna ask you about what your values are. That's something really important that I've talked so much about on former past episodes, and I'll continue to talk about values. It's a lot of work that we get to do together to really dive deep into what you really, really think is important, what you really, really stand for, what your convictions are. I want to know what makes you you, and that's the art of it all. Because listen, I do not lead like you, lead you. And I may have the science variable tight. You and I may share the same scientific applications as a leader, but what's different about you and I is the way we express those strategies, those, those scientific data points, those those practical, pragmatic principles that we put into place, they're not the same. They don't act the same because of the person who's using those applications.04:01 You may implement them completely different because you see leadership differently than I do. And let's talk about why we're so different. I think this is why I'm such an advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion goals and principles inside organizations. I love this idea of a diverse workforce where we all come to the table all with different backgrounds, with different ways of looking at the world with different values that we bring to the table. And by the way, you and I may have the same value, but the way we express them are very different because we have different meanings behind each value. That's what's so beautiful about the art that bring individually to the organization. And I want for you to start looking at this as your masterpiece. How you demonstrate leadership, how you walk into that organization, how you communicate to your employees. I want for you to start thinking like a true artist, someone who is here to express their personal and professional values and belief systems.05:16 This is what makes you different than me. How beautiful is that? Why would I want the same person who thinks like me, who believes like I do, who has the same convictions as I leading the same way? I do not advocate for that. And that's something that's important to me as an executive coach, as a leadership trainer, as a coach to emerging leaders inside the Masters of Leadership Institute. I'm always talking about you. What makes you you? Because you, my friend, you take your heart and your brain and your mind everywhere you go. You understand what that means. You cannot separate yourself from your personal life. You bring your personal problems into the organization. And as such, you bring in your convictions, what you are passionate about, your standards, what you wanna live up to, you are bringing forth everything that makes you you. So if you think you can leave your personal problems at the door, I guarantee you it is spilling into your professional life, into your leadership role.06:39 Unconsciously. My friend, I did this for many years. I tried to box my emotions, box, my limiting beliefs, box up all the things that I thought was wrong with the world. I thought, I'm just gonna leave him right here at the door. I'll pick up my box on the way out, but I won't let this interfere in how I lead my people. Yeah, right? Let me tell you something about your mind. Your unconscious mind in particular runs 95% of your day. And at the unconscious level of your mind, there is where your beliefs are housed. There is where your habits of thought, even your physical habits are housed at your unconscious mind. Your memories are stored, the trauma is kept. All of those things that you endured as a little girl, all which includes your programming, which includes your conditioning, is all housed at the unconscious level of your mind.07:50 So if you think that that stops working and that you're only using your conscious mind to make rational, logical decisions, you my friend, are mistaken. The unconscious level of your mind rules 95% of your day, my friend, listen to me when I say you cannot leave that part of your mind at the door. You take it everywhere you go. And so what we get to do inside Masters of Leadership Institute is we get to look at those programmings, the conditioning that you have been exposed to. And it's so simple. We get to look at your behaviors and the results that you've created in your life, and then we work backwards from there. So if you created a very interesting result that has yielded negative results, okay, some results that are painful, results that are unfulfilling results that you wish you didn't create, that's where we'll start.08:53 That's our starting point. And then we reverse engineer so that we can find, well, what belief system has rooted inside her unconscious mind and how do we reframe it and create a new belief system to help her move forward as a leader? Because what's impacting your personal life, I guarantee you, is impacting your leadership life. So what you are experiencing in your personal life needs to be brought to the surface in coaching. And we get to do that in a very safe container one-on-one with me. We get to do that together so that if they're, you're experiencing something on the personal side of your life that you want to get clarity on, that you want to resolve, we get to do that through coaching so that you can show up like a powerful, authoritative, clear-minded, certain and resourceful leader that you are. And what I just described, is a masterful leader.10:02 Everything that I just shared with you is what we do inside the institute where we create masterful leaders so that you, my friend, get to gain control over your mindset. That's right. Self-awareness is part of this process of becoming a masterful leader. And we also help you build your skillset. And by the way, self-awareness is a skill that you can build. It's like a muscle. We're constantly building this very, very specific skillset, of course, along with communication skills, strategic planning skills, all the other skills that masterful leaders need. But I have to tell you, my friend, your mindset is the number one priority for me inside the institute. We set a very strong foundation before we move forward in building skillset. Hear me clearly. Your mindset is everything. I always say. It doesn't matter. All these skills that you have and all these actions and behaviors and putting out strategic plans and it failing on you, and then your mind spiraling out because you're going to make it mean something about your worthiness.11:15 You're gonna make it mean that your employees are out to get you. You're gonna make it mean that can't keep doing this job because you're burnt out. You are going to make it mean something about you personally. This is the power that our mindset has over us. I always say that mindset is 70% of your leadership practice. I've always said that. I've found that that's where we spend most of our time. Coaching is the mindset of the leader. Because leaders come to me with Harvard Business School graduate degrees. Clients come to me with PhDs. Clients come to me who are in the C-suite, some who are senior vice presidents, executive leaders, they're even CEOs of their organizations when I work with them. It is never about the skills or the actions that they take. It always, and I love to say this, all roads lead back to the mind.12:18 Dear leader, I say all this because our minds are what makes us unique. Again, the way we individually look at the world comes from our belief systems, comes from our habits of thinking, our habits of feeling, even our physical habits. It's what we have been exposed to as little girls. It's again, and I will say this until my last breath on this earth, it is our programming. It is how we've been socialized. So if you're a woman of color like me, you have a subculture that you've learned a lot from, some good, some really bad things, some things that we wanna move into the next generation and some things we wanna leave behind. There's so many layers upon layers of programming, a k, a socialization that we want to uncover because some of this is helping our art. And some of these layers of socialization are not.13:18 This is the beauty of our art, the art of your leadership. So here are a few questions that I want for you to ask yourself. Number one, what is important to me about leading this team, this team, the team that's right in front of me, not the one I wish I had, not the one I used to have, but this particular team. What is important to me about leading this team? You're gonna ask yourself this question until you have about 10 answers. And these answers are one word answers, short phrase answers. This is not a long paragraph. This is not a dissertation. What you're going to do, it's just brainstorm. This is reflecting on your values because your values are unconscious to you. Now, listen, they're unconscious to you, but for some like me who are trained to see this, we get to see through your results, through your behavior, through your actions.14:19 I can tell you what you believe in by what you've created in the organization. That is some deep work that you and I get to do. But on this episode, I want for you to ask yourself this question, what is important to me about leading this team to today? And again, come up with 10 very simple one word answers. And these are your values. They could be short phrases, but I want for you to keep this so simple for your mind and maybe go past 10, maybe you come up with 20. But I want for you to pour everything out. What's important to me about leading this team, this team right here today. And here's an example. What's important to me about leading my team, the team that I have today in my research company, is that there is respect, that I respect them and they respect me.15:16 That is my number one value as a leader follower relationship. I've been in leadership for a long time, my friend. I have led hundreds and thousands of employees and students and clients. By now, I know a thing or two about leadership. And my number one value, which again, I answered with that simple question. What is important to me about leading my team today is that there is respect, that there's respect between us among us, because respect, without respect, my friend, you can't have trust among your team. Which leads me to my number two value. I wanna respect them. And guess what? Respect isn't earned. Like forget that my friend. It's not like a college degree. It's you earned it. Uh, I should always be respected there. It's on the wall. No, my friend, your actions, right? Developing a relationship with your employees, right? Seeing them with rose colored glasses, looking at them through the lens of potential, not through the lens of fault, not through the lens of problems, but through the lens of potential where you get to see them for, for who you know they could be.16:31 That's showing respect. It's being respectful of another human who's doing the best they can with the brain that they have, right? Because your employees are coming to you with lots of trauma and lots of other conditioning and programming from other workplace, um, organizations, right? So they're coming to you with a brain already full of conditions and programming and socialization that you need to respect. And so for me, number one is respect. And number two is trust. Because without respect, I can't trust my people and I wanna trust them. I wanna leave them to do their jobs, give them the autonomy that they deserve, trust that they're gonna do a great job, because I believe in their potential, because I believe in my, my leadership potential. I believe in what I'm doing as a leader. So why wouldn't I trust them? That's my number two. And my number three is transparency.17:31 And that looks like being transparent as a communicator. Like, look, listen, that didn't work out for us last time. How about we try something different? Or, Hey, listen, you know, I haven't heard from you in about two days. Is everything okay? You know, this is unusual for you because we talk every day. Is there something you need to tell me? Right? Being transparent. And we do that through our behavior. We do that through our communicating, whether it's communicating verbally through Zoom, virtually, or even through email. So those are my three values that I answered, that I came up with when I answered that question. What is important to me about leading this very specific team in this time, space reality at this moment, right? Not the one I wish I had, not the one I had before, but right here, right now. I think that's a powerful start to identifying who you are as a leader, what is important to you as a leader, so that as you are building relationships with your employees, these are the values that will stay conscious to you.18:35 So we're bringing the unconscious to the conscious level of your mind. Write these down, put 'em on a post-it note, put 'em where your employees can see them too. And that way they know, well, my leader really wants respect, and I, I want it too. I think them, number one is, is equally important for me, okay? She also wants to trust me and I wanna trust her too as a leader. So yeah, I agree with number two and number three, transparent transparency. How fantastic. That way your employees get to see what's going on under the hood of your mind. And these values create your art, the art of leadership, your leadership, my friend, because my values are different than yours. And if again, they are the same, they're not necessarily demonstrated the same, because we may have a different definition of what that value means to us.19:28 So I want for you to start with that. This is how you will be exposed to your own art. What's important to you? What do you stand for? These are your convictions. These are your standards. This is how you wanna lead. This is how you want your team to express themselves as well with, with a level of trust, with a level of transparency and respect. What are your values? Name your top three from that long list that you came up with. So of the 10 plus that you come up with, just pick three and put them in a in a hierarchy. What's number one? What's number two, and what's number three? And then just reflect on the actions and behaviors you take from each of these values. That's it. Then you'll start seeing how it's impacting your leadership practice, specifically your employee or your team performance.20:21 This is the great work we get to do, my friend. So this is about really figuring out what your art is, the art of your leadership. All right? I know you found today helpful. I know it's very helpful for my clients, and I cannot wait to hear from you. Know that I'm here to support you from the beginning all the way to the end. Wherever it is your final destination is on this leadership journey. I cannot wait to support you inside the institute, so you know where to find me. And then reach out to me over on LinkedIn. You can find me at Dr. Denise Simpson. And let me know how this episode has helped you. All right, my friend. Have a wonderful rest of your day, and I look forward to serving you on our next episode. Take good care. Hey, let me invite you, my friend, into the Masters of Leadership Institute in this program, you will become a masterful leader in just 12 sure weeks. That's right. You will forget self-doubt. You will no longer be confused and scratch overwhelm because you, my friend, are going to learn how to gain control over your mindset, build your skillset, and make strategic decisions like a masterful leader. So join me inside Masters of Leadership Institute, head of to dr denise simpson.com/mli. I cannot wait to support you on this 12 week journey. I'll see you inside.
